Dear Kriyananda

Q: What are some of the basic concepts of yoga, and how are these principles misunderstood?

A: Whether we are referring to yoga or mysticism of the world religions and philosophies, there are a few basic principles that are most often misunderstood in the Western world.

First, and most important, is the principle sometimes called the law of karma. In the Western world, we consider this concept, scientifically, the law of cause and effect. In religious traditions of the Western world, it is considered the law of retribution. It is not the law of retribution. It is the principle, or law, of learning. It is a way of nature, or life, getting your attention.

There are only three factors in life: you, your environment and the communications or non-communications between you and your environment. In this awakened world that you are in now, there is the physical world, you and your inner reaction. When you are asleep, it is you, your dream life and your inner reaction. You’re in meditation, it’s your meditative life, you and your inner reaction. You’re into the astral world, it’s your astral world, you and your inner reaction.

Whatever you do tends to become habit (and for certain actions, once is a habit). The law of karma differs from the law of causation in the scientific world, because in the scientific world the law of causation has to do with energy, and this energy is being depleted, according to their theory, until at some point all the energy will cease to be and everything stops. In yoga and in mysticism, the law of karma transcends. It does not end, and it does not go into a period of entropy; it goes into a new cycle.

The karma (which is the habits from the past) is stored in the astral body, so that when our physical body dies, whether it’s cremated or buried, we are not in that physical body. We are in the astral body, which for all of us ascends upward to a subtler plane, a more prior plane, some people say a better plane. And all the memories, regrets, guilts, all the things we have learned about ourselves and the universe in which we live are carried in that astral body. At some particular time we turn around and descend back down and reincarnate into the earth with a new body, but with the memory tracks and the karma of the past.

Secondly, karma never runs out; it is forever. And the whole idea of this incarnation is to understand that we are not so much dealing with the external world or the internal world as we are dealing with the memory track of the past, and we have to neutralize it.

There are people who–whether it is Lord Buddha, Lord Krishna, Jesus or otherwise–are waiting for him to forgive them. But the truth is the Divine One, whatever name you give to it, has already long since forgiven us. We have not learned how to forgive ourselves, and that is what mysticism is all about. From lifetime to lifetime, we are trying to balance out the memory track of the past.

All karma is good, if you look at it mystically, because it teaches us to understand ourselves, how to deal with people and how to deal with our world. It is not a punishment. The problem (if that’s the right word) is that life says, “You are going the wrong way.” You, your higher mind; you, the Atma; you, the awareness principle, is saying, “You’re going wrong way,” and you’re not listening. It keeps saying this, each time a little louder. In other words, karma is the attention grabber. It tries to make you aware that you are hurting yourself, or causes you to remember, “Oh, I have done this before and it didn’t work right, and it hurt me, hurt other people and why am I still doing it.”

The second principle is the idea of reincarnation, and many people, East and West, seem to feel that it is a punishment. It is not a punishment, it’s a gift. Reincarnation gives you an infinite amount of time to fulfill all of your wishes, all of your dreams, no matter what you wish. If you want to be a millionaire, you will be–if not in this lifetime, in the future. If you want to be married, you will be. If you want to be wise, you will be. But the whole purpose of going back to karma, back to our memory banks to learn about ourselves, is not to want to be married or wealthy, etc., but to be happily married, happily wealthy. And that is the secret: to balance ourselves, to understand that it’s an internal state of consciousness of acceptance and contentment.

The third principle is the principle of creative energies. The mind is powerful. People have this idea that others can hurt them, and they get nervous. What they fail to realize is that only that to which they are relative can affect them. For example, if someone is screaming at you and you are relative to their emotionality, then your mind will react to their emotionality and will also become emotional. If we could understand this principle, then, quite simply, what we would do is not be relative to it. And when others become emotional, rather than react, we would have compassion for them. We would understand the problem, but our minds would remain calm and clear. Then we would see quite clearly the best way to deal with the people and things within our universe.

The fourth principle is dreams. Mystically speaking, dreams have two or three important values. You already know one: you go to sleep and rest physiologically and psychologically from the day and get ready for the next “tournament” the following day. Secondly, the dream state takes all the experiences of the day, puts them into little compartments and simplifies them.

Next, and most vital, it takes all the karma, the simple karma that you have created today, and dissolves it away through dream symbolization, dream neutralization and dream fantasy so that for the next day, there is no heavy accumulation. If we have a full dream life, at the end of our physical incarnation there will be very little accumulated karma, and, therefore, we become more easily freer. If we disrupt our dream life, if we do not utilize the mysticism of the subtler state of consciousness called the dream state (not the sleep state, but the dream state), then the karma is not completely neutralized. It begins to accumulate, starting with participles of karma that gather together into groups, which get heavier and heavier and condense into denser pieces of karma that accumulate in the astral. This means that when we get into the astral, we have to neutralize a great deal of the karma of the life we just left before we can move on to begin our new life, a higher evolution. That is really very important.

The last factor is this wrong idea that the earth is a place of punishment, that it is evil, that people’s bodies are evil, that this is a terrible place. It isn’t. Putting it in clear Western terms: God is good, the Divine One is good and from goodness only goodness comes. The Divine One created this universe, and therefore this universe is good.

And so all the ugliness, stress and negativity of this world are humanity-made. The problem is that we are feeding ourselves, but we are not feeding other people. The point we miss, mystically, is that we need to feed the environment that we are in. One level, a lower, but important level, is to feed the culture–the civilization in which we live. I prefer to say that we are living in the garden of God, and it’s a large garden. For some of us it’s a desert, for some of us it’s a flood plain, for some of us it’s a swamp, and for some of us it’s bearing fruits and vegetables–organic.

What we need to learn, mystically, is how to take this soil that we have depleted, due to our own greed, selfishness and cravings, and put spiritual, divine energy back into it so that that which we grow within the garden will be fruitful, meaningful and nourishing. You are good, the earth is good. The goal of life is to be happy, or bliss-filled, if you prefer. Be happy, be content, be wise. Gain your happiness and share it.

The final factor is that we all have our own karma that we have created, but it takes other people to trigger, or manifest, that karma. If you stop and think for a minute, you realize that whatever good or difficulty has come into your life has always come through human beings. For example, if two nations have the karma to go to war, and if all the people in both nations say, “We may have the karma, but we refuse to respond to it, we refuse to go to war,” there would be no war. In the same way, if a person had a terrible piece of karma and another person who feels the impulse says: “I refuse to be the bringer of that piece of karma,” it will not manifest. If it doesn’t manifest at the time, it will not manifest.

In short, mysticism says that no matter what karma others have created for themselves, we should not be the “manifester” of that heavy, constrictive karma. In so doing, we have freed them from that piece of karma, and hopefully they will learn by gentler lessons. And, of course, we will therefore free ourselves from some of the heavier karma that we have. Be able to move forward in this incarnation to greater love, wisdom, understanding, fruitfulness and creativity not only to gain contentment, but to see and to experience the beauty that is here on this earth plane, this garden of God.

Thank you for your question. Deepest blessings to you and all.

Goswami Kriyananda was the founder and spiritual preceptor of The Temple of Kriya Yoga, 2414 N. Kedzie, Chicago, and the author of several books and home study courses. He transitioned in April 2015. A complete audio/video library of Kriyananda’s lectures, courses, and discussions are available at yogakriya.org. The Temple continues to offer many courses, including a Kriya yoga seminary, yoga teacher trainings, and meditation teacher trainings. For more information, please call 773.342.4200 or visit yogakriya.org.